Great Visual Effects on the Sega Saturn
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.พ. 2025
- Was the Sega Saturn a weak, joke of a product many would have you believe? Nope, it sure as heck wasn't.
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Opening 3D Logo By:
Jan Neves
TH-cam Page - / jan3d
Opening 2D Animation By:
Kevin Bhall
Facebook - / kevin.bhall.14
Episode Notes:
1. Captured on real Saturn hardware.
2. Let me know if you'd like to see a part 2! There are many great looking games on the Saturn. Sound off with your recommendations.
3. Unlike the first for the Sega CD, Keio Flying Squadron 2 was mainly a platformer on the Saturn. It was not released in North America.
4. There was a companion release to Decathlete called Winter Heat that was a looker as well.
5. I would love to see what AM2 could have done with The House of the Dead. Sega was moving away from the Saturn by then, so it just wasn't meant to be.
6. Burning Rangers plays much better with the 3D Analog Pad. Much like Nights, it makes everything so much more responsive.
7. Dragon Force is my favorite game on the Saturn. If you have never played it, my advice about staying away from spoilers really does matter. Learning the game on your own is 100% more rewarding. Spoiler strategies can completely break the experience.
8. Elevator Action Returns was only released on the Saturn that generation. I think the Playstation could have done it, but I bet it would have had mid level loading and cut frames due to lower video RAM.
There's been a lot of questions about the opening music at the title screen. That's Akira's Theme from Virtua Fighter 2. That entire game had an incredible soundtrack.
Regarding Sonic R. I found a channel dedicated to coding from a former employee of Travellers Tales. Im sure all ghe fans will like it as I did. Thanks for a great channel.
Here it is th-cam.com/video/CPaNNiB2H-s/w-d-xo.html
Indeed it did have great music.
I wonder if the change to pure / ported Multiplatform titles caught sega off guard to a degree, before the PlayStation Sega pretty much always got its own version of every branded third party title and not a straight port from the snes, that completely changed with the 32 bit gen consoles and it suddenly became normal to simply port a game rather than create a different version for each different console. That was definitely a shift from what had been happening previously.
Amazing OST
I really hope this is just part 1. I love the graphics of the Sega Saturn. More please!
And thank you for your hard work. 😊
I was just going to say the same thing! :)
Don't count out the super scalers which were still just downgraded ports on 16 bit systems but pixel perfect/audio translation on the saturn.
I was a "Saturn" boy when it was still out. And I still hold a place for it. I picked it over the PlayStation and I don't regret it. Sega Saturn is still my top favorite system! It gave me a lot of great games.👌👍👍
Saturn and Sega CD were both incredible consoles if you bought the best games. Unfortunately on Saturn that meant having to import some. If you got the right games for those two, nobody would have time to play all the incredible games, I'm still catching 25 years into playing my Saturn. Only finished playing all the great Sega CD games a few years ago.
2D games was the best on Saturn, my import collection sits proudly, full of masterpieces, fighting to shmups
@@ominojaku1069 You're definitely right on that.💯👌👍👍
I know how you feel. I picked the Master System over NES and TurboGrafx over Genesis and don't regret it. I rented an imported Japanese Saturn when it first came out but Clockwork Knight and Panzer Dragoon didn't leave a great impression and I ended up buying the PS1 on launch day on a whim. I don't regret that decision either. :)
i had friends with both and initially i was more into saturn but it didnt take very long to become apparent that the playstation has superior hardware and developers. i spent far more time at the playstation friends houses. eventually id own both and my saturn was completely replaced by my playstation within a year. the playstation just had so much more quality. i was really upset about saturns quality being a genesis kid and vehemently against the snes. segas beginning of the end starts with the saturn.
we had with my brother Saturn, we could not believe that such a wonderful console fell so quickly and gave us so much joy long after its fall
Shining force 3 should be mention with the fight scenes. Some of those magic spells Blowed my mind back in the day.
Yeah Shining Force III is a beautiful looking game imo
I'm Dreaming of Shining Force IV, just like the Shining Force of old.....
@@insaneasock3156 Oh man... Can you imagine? You aren't alone in your dream. The Shining Force series is a big part of my childhood.
@@insaneasock3156 it would be so great
I don’t play video games anymore but if they deliver a new SF I‘ll buy what ever console/hardware I need to play that! Just hope they‘d keep up the awesome music from the game back then.
after playing Virtua Fighter in arcade, I new I needed a Saturn and I'm so happy I was fortunate enough to get one. my library is pretty small when compared to my other consoles, but I'm still happy I have a Saturn. Good memories!
Burning Rangers is my favorite Saturn Game. The scene with the dolphin really sat with me as a kid.
Guardian Heroes, Virtua Cop 2 and Sonic R still look great to me.
I loved Guardian Heros. Trying to unlock all the characters to use.
I love light game guns, virtual cop 1 and 2 were great fun for me
Grandia texture is wonderful.
Panzer Dragoon RPG full 3D world is also amazing.
Incredible Hardware for the few able programmers like Andromeda, Team Ninja, AM2.....still hope to see a playable Shenmue Demo on it!
I’d love to see a playable Shenmue Saturn demo. I wonder if any of those Saturn demo builds (or source code!) still exists somewhere in Sega’s archives?
A great list of games indeed and Zwei was certianly going to need a mention, but I would have also dropped Panzer Dragoon Saga in there as well. Lighting wise it has some absolutely stunning moments, from the simple yet elegant ones like walking past a camp fire in the Camp and seeing the fire light up Edge, to the more complicated ones like the real time Dragon morphing, which was so impressive that they used the same tech in Phantasy Star Online on the Dreamcast for your character creation.
Then there's moments in Uru at nightime, or flying through a under water transparant tunnel, to the staggering lighting effects during boss battles. Either way, great video, and yes, the Saturn was a beast!
Sonic r to this day blows me away. The lead developer has a TH-cam channel as well gamehut
I was addicted to Sonic R. I remember playing that game until I literally unlocked everything! What a classic!
Music was special for sonic R, loved that game
@The Monster Under Your Bed It did feel a bit weird at the beginning but there are techniques you can master in the game to help manoeuvre better and controls also varied depending on characters selected. I also owned Mario Kart 64 at the time and I admit the controls were much simpler in that game. But Sonic R introduced a different style of racing game which can be just as enjoyable once you get hang of the controls.
Hey man, what's up? Can you share that lead developer's YT channel?
Sega Saturn issues was his graphics library. Many of the advance effect wasn't available until December of 1996. I think it was called SGL 2.1 which had the ability to do software triangles on SCDSP and the slave CPU. With software triangles you could apply full transparencies, environment mapping, and light sourcing. Unfortunately it was too little to late as games taking advantage of SGL 2.1 wouldn't ship until late 97/early 98 which was too late.
Generic software rendering solutions are rarely suitable for a particular game and no, neither of Saturn CPUs can provide transparencies with PS1-like quality at least at decent performance no matter what code you run.
Also, if a software developer has to wait for libraries to give him software rendering support, that’s a shitty developer who won’t program anything great.
PS1 had crap libs too. Devs had to either release slow 256x240 3D games or learn to use hardware directly. This is true for almost every platform.
Saturn fanboys and their excuses.
The absolutely best devs said that Saturn is a crazy mess. Get over it.
And BTW Sonic R uses the usual VDP2 2D transparency effect. Which basically works like SNES VDP on steroids, minus sprites. Same as mode7&transparency usage in games like Axelay.
Sonic R has no software transparency. It only uses software rendering for reflective objects in the main menu. This effect can be easily done in hardware on PS1, but not on Saturn, because there’s no uv mapping. Many 3D games are crippled by this deficiency, which also leads to blockier look of 3D characters in most Saturn games.
@@noop9k No one cares how a special effect on a certain game was achieved. What matters is it GOT achieved. There is nothing on the PS1 that looks half as good as the full transparency effects, in Sonic R, on one of the tracks, and on the water. Your whole argument the system can´t provide PS1 quality transparencias is utter BS. Jon Burton who was one of the coders on Sonic R on the Saturn, and several PS1 games like Rascal, has said multiple times the PS1 could not run Sonic R with playable frame rates, because despite the Saturn being an over engineered and complicated system to program for, it actually had the horsepower to run it.
PS1 and the Saturn are completely different machines. PS1 was easier to program for but it was technically not as powerful, even in raw polygon performance, and plenty of 3D games have better looking polygons, even multi plat games like Dead or Alive, which not only renders more polygons per second than the PS1 version, they look better, the game runs at a higher resolution and at twice the frame rate (60 vs 30) and debunks any argument die hard fanboys and biased press always had towards the system. The Saturn had no native hardware transparency, but could still achieve the effect through software or by utilizing the system different chips for different pieces of code. Saturns main issue was the design of the hardware itself, and the software library when the console released. It´s funny how PS1 games today look like crap for the most part with distorted textures and Saturn games, even some 3D games, aged like fine wine instead of aging like milk.
Peter Matias
Citation needed. I watched a lot of Jon Burton videos. Where did he say about polycounts being better on Saturn?
I can only agree about fullscreen transparency being too costly on PS1 for a 60 FPS game, unless it is a low res game like Symphony of the Night.
Tekken 3 on PS1 runs at high res mode at 60 FPS. Still lower res than Saturn hi-res, but unlike Saturn hi-res it has rich 16 bit color and shaded textured characters. While Saturn hi res only has 8 bit color, no transparencies and no gouraud shading.
Unlike, say, N64 there are lots of 60 FPS games on PS1.
Peter Matias I’m not asking you to stop worshiping Saturn, but please stop saying wrong things.
There is no software transparency on Saturn used in any games I saw.
VDP1 has hardware transparency, VDP2 has hardware transparency. But they have limited applications, are not even compatible with each other and VDP1 transparency is quite slow. So, the developers have to struggle to find a use for them. Unlike PS1 where you can render anything with or without it, as long as you are prepared to pay its cost, which is reasonable. Even simple cases like ones used in SOTN could not be easily transferred to Saturn.
Using transparency on PS1 is a no brainer, on Saturn you need to build your game around it and still be unable to duplicate.
For example, even in Burning Rangers, which uses a technique nobody else does, you can’t see one translucent flame through another, and they still use mesh effect for other stuff.
Great content. Glad there's a retro channel dedicated to Sega, 99% are nintendo. I only had snes, so I love seeing stuff like this.
Wow. I had no idea the visuals on the Saturn were this good for the time. Some of the arcade ports especially... seeing _Virtua Cop 2_ like that made me feel like a kid because it's so damn close to the original!
To me that ability of the Saturn to create those backgrounds that look like they go on forever was so impressive and could have made some games look incredible had it been used more. Like it would have made games look much clearer than comparative titles on the PS1 or N64 that used fog.
Anyone remember Winter Heat?? Mighty cool hi res 60 fps graphics there too...the transparent effects on the ice during the skating event were mint!! Nice work Sega Lord X !!!!
Yo the underwater boss in panzer dragoon still looks amazing, and even a bit terrifying. Impressive
I got Last Bronx, Burning Rangers, Dragon Force and Panzer Dragoon Saga at the end of the Saturns life and were probably the last I bought new at retail. I love Burning Rangers to this day and it could easily benefit from a remake.
I played the heck out of Powerslave back then too and loved it. I still have my original launch Saturn and it still works aside from a controller port issue at times.
My dad (RIP) and I spent countless hours playing Virtua Cop 1 & 2 together and I got his games and saturn when he passed. Such fond amazing memories with this system.
Love your videos.
With more than 1100 games, the saturn has for sure a great library and somes very fun unknown games ( culdcept, cyberdoll, sorvice...)
Fantastic video 👍 Great to see Last Bronx getting the praise it deserves! Sonic Rs transparent track looks great, check out the latter bonus stages of Sonic 3d Blast. The transparent track there looks even better in my opinion 👍
i love the saturn. thank you for your channel. brings me a big smile each time you have a new video. more Saturn and Dreamcast!
A fantastic video featuring the awesomeness of the Saturn's visuals. A powerhouse compilation SLX. Great job. Gotta love this underrated console!!!
I love my Saturn so much. Younger friends of mine are blown away by its games when we play them.
Ingenious video!! Sega Lord X you are the best!!
Talk about perfect timing, as I sat down to eat my late dinner a new SLX video drops!
Yo, whats up my late dinner homie ? Whatcha eating ?
Late dine at 5am?
@@Gatorade69 I had yellow rice, baked chicken, avocado and green plantain it very good! I was texting you back last night but fell asleep lol
Super Tempo was another beautiful 2D game that often goes overlooked.
Im still impressed by effects in Burning Rangers. They really pushed everything from the system in this game.
Elevator Action looks like a really fun game. I always see it for sale on eBay but never looked into it further. I think I will purchase it!
I picked my Saturn whilst in 95 at college. I still have that console (and another) + 70 odd games. I just picked up my friends old 32” crt tv and plan on setting them up. Classic Sega
Dragon Force. There is was in a kiosk at Funcoland. So I gave it a whirl, 45 minutes later I told the salesman, take it out I need to buy it. One of my favorite on the Saturn
As always thanks for giving the Saturn some love SegaLordX. Id love to see a remaster of a few of these games on switch
Well it already got panzer dragoon.
Burning rangers would be a good one for sure. Elevator action returns should be on everything though.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu I own panzer dragoon but would love just some Saturn classics including sega rally to drop on switch. Sega really doesn't understand how much of a fan base they have for there classic games during that era. Oh and I would love for Scud Race to finally get a home port. Dreamcast port was in development but never showed up
@@Darth001
Yeah Saturn and Dreamcast as well as arcade games are released few and far between from Sega. They have an impressive back catalog but they rarely if ever dig into it, it's always just Sonic and the usual stuff Genesis / Mega drive compilations and that's about it.
I can't thank you enough for putting this package together. As a hardcore Saturn fan I have to deal with BS like 'it was a joke compared to the PSX!' all the time, as well as the 'mesh effect transparencies' (which really did look better on composite rather then S-video or modern emulators) and other things you highlight and eviscerate so well in this video. You've also introduced me to a couple of Saturn games I've never seen or heard of before, not to mention a port of one of my favourite arcade games in Elevator Action II, so thank you even more for that! I've got some downloading to do on this wet and rainy morning. ;-)
Can't wait to see what other videos you have going on here.
Thanks for the awesome new vid SegaLordX
This channel is what intorduced me to many great Saturn games. I was surprised to see so many awesome games they are still exclusive to the Saturn. I think the games that caught my eyes are at least on par with if not more than PS1 and N64. I also just really liked how good looking 32 bits 2D games are. I feel like most people are sleeping on them, back then and nowdays. You see so many 8-bit and 16-bit retro Indie games, yet very little going for the style of this generation. People should really get on that.
thank u so much keep it up........love ur work
I adore the Saturn, one of my favorite consoles!
Street Fighter Zero 3 is very impressive with huge sprites and amazing animation.
best 2D fighting game.
I'm always happy to see SLX give the Saturn some much needed justice. It's a wonderful platform that was largely maligned by the media in the west and crushed under Sony's yoke everywhere, much like the N64 ended up being. Sadly there's really no competing with software support, and the Saturn needed more of that, even though it did have the support of some heavyweights (Sega themselves, for the most part, Treasure, Camelot, Capcom, SNK and such).
Thanks for linking the first video. I'll have two great videos to watch at work
No problem. Hope you enjoy them.
Some great games here. In particular Powerslave and Dragon Force - seriously underrated masterpieces.
@@gaylordfocker7990
Well, we are talking about this Saturn here. I would say there's a huge amount of people who have never touched the console let alone played any of it's games.
@@gaylordfocker7990 Well a lot of magazines at the time gave them 7/10 etc. But I guess under-appreciated is probably the better term.
I played Dragon Force to death!
@@FPL_Frost Same, I finished it at least once with each faction and some of them 3-4 times.
@@harryradley Goldark and Junon were my favourites! Dragons OP, Mages good to have. That manual was so worn checking out the strengths/weaknesses table!
Saturn was always the console that got away for me, I came 2 the fifth gen too late. the way Slx talks about it reminds me of how I feel with my Dreamcast.
I was a PS1 and Saturn owner back in the day, and used to frequently play N64 at my friend's. The quality of graphics on the Saturn was really inconsistent which gave people the wrong impression, myself included. But playing a game like Sonic R blew me away back then, and convinced me that the Saturn could run games just as good looking as the PS1. Hell, Sonic R was even up to N64 standards. My friend with the N64 used to come over all of the time and play it. The problem was that back then, I had no idea why so many games on the Saturn failed to look that good.
I mean that's just it the PS1 was weaker than the Saturn but it was much easier to program for.
To get the most out of the Saturn you really had to know what you were doing. Ease of use was always going to be the achilles heel of the Saturn but that on top of the fact that many of the better games never left Japan guaranteed it wouldn't have much of a presence anywhere else.
Great video brings back a lot of memories especially my favorite two Saturn games radiant silvergun and Dragon Ball Z Legends
LOVE LOVE all your vids holmes. Sega was my babysitter from 1992 to 1999 so watching these well done vids of yours really brings me back to some good days.
Wow I never knew the saturn was this fowerfull. After my megadrive time my friends told me to buy a playstation so i did. Still regret it
My friend and I had a pact, we would get different consoles so we can play ALL the games at eachother's house.
I did call dibs on the Saturn, but he got the money first to buy the console, luckily he let me get the saturn as he opted for PS.
I mainly buy the Saturn exclusives because most of the 3rd party games do look better on his PS, but man di we love playing virtua cop! We never go to the arcade ever again after I got that game!
Love everything you do. Never stop.
I love Sega Saturn, congratulations for the great job!
just remember that , the lost world jurassic park also has great graphics on sega saturn .
That's how i like to start Friday's....with your videos...😀
Awesome! Was hoping for exactly this when I saw the Megadrive themed special effect videos. There's plenty here for a new episode - here's some requests! Street Racer by Ubisoft - amazing use of VDP2 layers - as many as 5 (excluding text) in one level, including multiple transparent layers. Radiant Silvergun - amazing combination of 2D and 3D graphics. Winter Heat - same reasons as Athlete Kings/Decathlete but more polygon landscapes. Grandia - for creating a huge, solid, believable 3D world.
If only SEGA made better decisions back then - we could have a completely different Saturn success story.
It's a real shame so many people don't know what the Saturn was capable of.
Guess that makes it more special in a way.
Like a cancelled TV show that was actually awesome but gone too soon (R.I.P. Firefly) 😔
The Saturn truly was the Firefly of game consoles.
Keio Flying Squadron 2 is probably my favorite Saturn title. (Along with Elevator Action Returns.) It's such a beautiful game. I just never get tired of playing it. For people in the US that can play imports, know that the PAL version is completely in English and NOT optimized for that region, which means it runs at a full 60Hz without borders in the correct aspect ratio.
Wish I knew about that years ago. I imported one Saturn PAL game and never bothered with it again due to that different video standard.
The sprites and animations on Street Fighter Zero 3 are pretty good. I heard that the sprite size on the Saturn version were even bigger than the Dreamcast version. That paired with the Saturn Controller which was perfect for capcom fighters made one of the best experiences to play that title at home.
The sprites and backgrounds on all capcom games weren't bigger than the dreamcast or arcade. it's just the resolution the games are running at that makes things seem bigger. the dreamcast is actually the one displaying the image at the correct size.
Too many people keep forgetting or just don't know that the saturn doesn't support the same resolution as the cps2 board and that's why things look bigger than they actually are.
Radiant silver gun.
And maybe not a VFX challenge but the sprites in princess crown.
Astal is my favorite looking 2d game of all time! Also, Panzer Dragoon Zwei looks better than most things on Playstation and n64
Excellent video! Please do more videos about hardware features of Sega consoles and arcades!
Wow, Decathlete looks so much like an actual Model 2 game.
It also runs in hi-resolution mode the whole time. You can play it on a HD TV and it's super neat.
Check out winter heat too, that's equally impressive in hi Res mode
It’s not about the hardware. It’s how you use it that matters.
@@NB-1 The problem with that comparison is that you were comparing games and play stations later life cycle. Unfortunately, Sega Saturn was only around for about two years in the west and we never got to see its full developmental power. There’s no doubt that Saturn Shamu would’ve blown away anything on the PlayStation. This coming from a Sony fan.
still game on my saturn now and then, more than my PSx
Most of the time I watch SLX's videos for his vast knowledge of Sega's history.
Some of those times I watch just to hear his pronunciation of "water" and "bosses". :)
Keep doin' what you do, Lord of all Sega!
To my opinion the Sega Saturn felt more like arcade console and the PlayStation a home console but for me had the best of both worlds back in the late 1990's because I owned both and I had over hundred games both combined for the systems, ah good times.
The Saturn was my favorite system back in the day and it’s still one of my favorite. To me the Saturn was better than the PlayStation. I really wish sega would make another console as the Dreamcast was one of the best systems ever.
When it came to actual gameplay the $ony machine didn’t stand a chance in the early days it was hyped up by mass marketing campaigns. Have you actually played destruction derby (Pooh). It was mostly non-gamers who thought pretty graphics made a game and real gamers know that’s not the case. There are some really, really bad “games” in the early PlayStation market. It really all came down to the fact that $ony had a massive budget to exploit and targeted casual and even non-gamers.
@Code Metal Monkey do you think Toshinden was good? WOW.
@@MGForums imo ff7 only had story going for it the difficulty was braindead and games like panzer dragoon already had better graphics in 1995
I 😍 sega saturn is really a great console thanks for the videos
I manged to own half the games on this list. Looks like I was lucky back then. I wouldn't own the imports until much later. Kinda wish I played the Saturn more than I do.
There’s a nice new wireless controller that feels and works great. Could make your Saturn 🪐 playing more accessible
Love ur vids man keep killin it!
7:04 The track isn't color cycling, it's a variating blending effect with a moving 3D VDP2 layer (combined with a clever use of VDP2 extended color calculation that makes it blend more than 2 layers). You can see it in an emulator by disabling NBG0 and sprite layers.
Gotta love that lobotomy software player movement with the screen jive in and out of strafing.
You're Sega Lord X. And I will catch you next time.
Man, I really dig lighting effects from that generation like the ones you showed on Powerslave
Still play Elevator Action Returns today. Classic.
Like SLX says it's Saturn doing what it does best and of course it's one of many many games that never got outside of Japan. (Officially I mean)
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu i imported mine when it came out. Had my saturn switched so it could play everything.
@@madyak6669
Very nice. Yeah if you could get a Saturn that could play imports that was the way to go.
Just came here from Part 2 of this series. FWIW, I think it would help to put the links in the video description. Thank you for the awesome content!!
Honestly, Panzer Dragoon II ranks as my pick for the best looking game of the 5th console generation. It really did crank out everything the Saturn had, and made for an immersive experience that I'll never soon forget.
I want to play the Panzer games so bad. I hear what Zelda Ocarina of time was to Nintendo fans and what FFVIl was to Sony fans, the Panzer series was just that to Sega fans back then.
My favourite console ever
I really enjoyed this, Thx for the memories
Madness how the shooting game looks better then golden eye in the 64 but I’ve never heard of it
I have Powerslave and still love it.
Great way to start a video...with Akira stage theme from VF2. That track will always give me the chills....
It is really really good.
Another great video. I love seeing Keio 2 here. Its a weird, wonderful and beautiful 2D action game. The 2D visuals are unique to the Saturn and the variety in gameplay and stages make it a slightly better overall game than the original Mega CD classic. In my opinion, or course.
Used to play the demo on sega flash all the time! never saw it in a shop tho.
i wish instead of Sonic R, they made a Saturn Sonic Drift, using that same great engine but Sonic Drift's gameplay
Well look who it is 😀 guess we are both fans of the Lord
@@TheLegendofRenegade oh hello fellow sega fan!
Code Metal Monkey This was executive meddling, IIRC. Sega wanted a Sonic game and they got a Sonic game.
Need to rewatch Gamehut to confirm..
I actually think Winter Heat looks even better than Decathlete. It is essentially the same engine but snowy/winter aesthetic is beautiful
That alone sounds like a good excuse for a "part two" of this topic very soon. I hope to see it.
Man, your content keeps getting better and better. Thumbs up!
PS1 max sprite onscreen = 4000
Saturn max sprite onscreen = unlimited
The amusing thing about dithered transparencies is that they are *really* common these days. Games like Uncharted 4 and many Unreal Engine 4 titles dither transparencies as a way of using less resources (and at high resolutions are not too noticeable)
Yup. I notice it quite frequently in Monster Hunter World. I thought we were beyond this type of transparency now with as powerful as modern day consoles are.
This is really underrated visual effects that I wish everybody in the west back day could actually see that the Saturn was true Competitor rather then see the 32-bit machine as joke and Mockery to the public.
We need to remember SEGA made the Saturn to be a 2S powerhouse giving us the photo realistic 1D games we dreamt about in the 16 but era.
Then they found out Sony's specs for the PlayStation and dumped a second SH2 processor in, in a rush.
So basically the Saturn was going to be so bad at 3D polygons before the second CPU it would never have been able to do their model 2 boards justice.
Sega in a nutshell .....
Saturn remains my favorite 5th generation console because the 2D and 2.5D effects still look stunning in 2020. The first PlayStation could also do decent 2D, but Sony focused heavily on 3D games that haven’t aged well. The Nintendo 64... I tried to like it but the texture filtering just makes it look muddy now. I much prefer the Saturn and PS1’s sharp pixel art.
To this day, the N64 may be the mainstream game console I like the least. I never liked that thing outside of a few specific games. To your point, it has such an unbalanced library. It could have used some 2D arcade ports. It should have been able to do that, even with carts rather than CDs.
ravagingwolverine Yeah, it needed a much wider variety of games. It definitely ran 3D platformers well for the time, but using cartridges killed the chance of getting the massive RPGs and weird multimedia titles that the PlayStation and Saturn had. At the very least it should have launched with the 64DD as standard, the real-time clock and Internet connection could have opened up a ton of opportunities.
@@wavefront9221 even the storage in the cartridge and main ram limitation cause the n64 to have blurry graphics.
While I know you don't wanna hear it, it's kind of a shame to hear that you wouldn't trade your time with the Saturn for anything, as the PS1 era really was the greatest era of gaming we had ever had up to that point. It was just smash hit after smash hit after smash hit for the PS1 back in it's day. Don't get me wrong, the Saturn is indeed a solid system with a good amount of great and exclusive games and was most definitely worth experiencing, but the PS1 had far more amazing and exclusive games & was simply the greatest home console experience anyone had ever seen up to that point. It may be cliche to say so, but I really think you missed out.
Great video by the way, really good job showing us what the Saturn could do.
You think because I loved Saturn I didn't play the PS1? I owned a Playstation right from its launch and played all the big games throughout its life.
@@SegaLordX Ah cool, I was not aware of that. Ppl didn't usually own both systems as kids, specially not from launch, as you kinda had to be rich and have a LOT of time on your hands to do that. If that was the case then I assume you're either in your 50's or later or had very rich and generous parents lol, that's the only conclusion I can come up with. Glad to hear it nonetheless, sounds like you are fairly experienced then.
I was 20 when Saturn and PS1 hit the NA market. I started working at 15. I paid for my own games. I learned early in life I couldn't rely on others for my gaming needs.
@@SegaLordX Ahh I gotcha. I can respect that.
Was pretty much that way for myself too aside for when I was a young kid & my parents didn't hate video games yet lol, which was pretty much just for that initial NES era of gaming. After that they started to absolutely hate them, I guess cus they saw that I was a huge fan of them and that wasn't going to change. My parents have always been the controlling type, they always wanted me to be the way they wanted me to be and to like the things they wanted me to like, and thus they were very unsupportive in general and never supported any sort of individuality.
They always gave me a hard time about my love for gaming and would only let me play a set number of hours and only on the weekends. It sucked man. I had to start sneaking around in order to get my gaming fix, cus they would literally hide my games and systems from me lol.
After the NES era I basically had to save up my allowance to buy games that I wanted, and I went from getting video games all the time to basically having to beg them to get me just one during the holidays. I also started working at a young age so I could afford my own swag.
I love my white Sega Saturn. So many great games to play including the 2D fighting ones! 😉
I'm glad you wouldn't trade your time with the Saturn for anything 😊 I'm not alone!!
Thanks for this video! I'm definitely going to grab a few of these games! Keep up the good work and Happy Holidays SLX!!
The sega saturn is an EXTREMELY unique console 👌 they are amazing 👏
Great video man, your content is infotmitave and enjoyable to watch. I recently piked up a Sega Saturn because of your video's. Any reccomendations game wise lol!!!
AMAZING SYSTEM!!! So much more untapped power. Unfortunately never got to to show it.
I actually kinda love the dithered mesh transparencies lol
Me too. It's not like the PlayStation didn't use dithering a lot either.
It's funny that this criticism of Saturn's transparencies is now being used again in modern console games and almost no one points it out as a negative now.
Thanks to you I've started getting that Batman tune at the end of your videos stuck in my head.
Burning Rangers looks gorgeous!!! Makes me think what a phantasy star online would have looked like if it started on the Saturn. Probably wouldn’t have called it Online
In sheer overall graphics and effects, Burning Rangers could have been the best looking Saturn game if _only_ it didn't have the blatant culling/"clipping" problem. It's really obvious. Btw you should have mentioned the 3D world area in Sonic Jam. I know it's not a full game but that's graphically more impressive than many of the games shown here. You have a large detailed 3D area with a seriously impressive view distance on top of that. Even the clouds are animated instead of just a simple static skybox.
Great vid. Although I picked up a Saturn last year, I'll never be able to get my original library of games back. Just too much $$ for the majority of them.
Yes, part 2 please
The Saturn really was not comparable to the PS1, it actaully was far beyond the PS1 technically, the PS1 simply could not do the massive environments Saturn could do in hardware, and attempting to do so would heavily cut your performance as you'd either have to run it in software or draw hundreds of polygons, the Saturn can create massive environments with minimal polygons, the only limitation being that it had to be flat, but you could use polygons to build the world while having a huge scale